Late yesterday officials said an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership was within reach, though it was not clear if the final grudging issues of protections for certain drug patents, and lowered trade barriers on auto parts and dairy products, were fully resolved.
Pressure was intense on negotiators, especially those from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the United States, not to undercut important home industries as they bargain over the remaining unresolved points of the broad-ranging treaty.
But the main barrier to a final deal was the length of intellectual property (IP) protection for biologics, a promising class of treatments derived from living materials.
The United States is seeking longer protections than the five years common in many countries.
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In the United States, pharmaceutical companies get 12 years of IP protection before rivals can produce "biosimilar" copycat drugs that sell more cheaply. But in most countries, the US protections for drug developers are seen as far too long, and costly, for health care systems.
Rather than a problem of just cutting tariffs or other trade barriers, lengthening protections could in many places require changing well-established national laws and IP protection policies.
According to one source informed on the progress of the talks, strong resistance to Washington's stance was coming from Australia, Chile and Peru.
The talks between top trade officials in Atlanta have gone well past the original Thursday deadline.
A number of trade ministers in the group had their eyes on their travel schedule: the G-20 group of leading economies is holding a meeting of trade ministers on Monday and Tuesday in Istanbul.
Their presence though underscored the stakes in the US-led effort to create the world's largest trade and investment zone that would comprise 40 per cent of the global economy.
Trade ministers had entered this week's TPP negotiations under pressure to strike a final deal, after their talks in Hawaii two months ago failed.